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"Sarasota Memorial Hospital" in Sarasota County, Florida is the nucleus of a medical research community.

Long life’s secrets may lie in DNA

“Sarasota Heradl Tribune”(Front Page)RESEARCH: Centenarians will have their genomes sequenced for answers

By MALCOLM RITTER Associated Press

Published: Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 1:00 a.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 10:54 p.m.

NEW YORK – George Eberhardt turned 107 last month, and scientists would love to know how he and other older folks like him made it that far. So he is going to hand over some of his DNA.

He is one of 100 centenarians taking part in a project announced Wednesday that will examine some of the oldest citizens with one of the newest scientific tools: whole-genome sequencing, the deciphering of a person’s complete collection of DNA.

Scientists think DNA from very old healthy people could offer clues to how they lived so long. And that could one day lead to medicines to help the rest of us stay disease-free longer.

By the time you reach, say, 105, “it’s very hard to get there without some genetic advantages,” says Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrics expert at Boston University.

Perls is helping find centenarians for the Archon Genomics X Prize competition. The X Prize Foundation, best known for a spaceflight competition, is offering $10 million in prize money to researchers who decipher the complete DNA code from 100 people older than 100. The contest will be judged on accuracy, completeness and the speed and cost of sequencing.

The contest is a relaunch of an older competition with a new focus on centenarians, and it’s the second sequencing project involving the elderly to be announced this month.

Genome pioneer J. Craig Venter says the centenarian project is just a first step in revealing the genetic secrets of a long and healthy life.

“We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness,” said Venter, who is co-chairing the X Prize contest.

The 107-year-old Eberhardt of Chester, N.J., played and taught tennis until he was 94. He said he is participating in the X Prize project because he is interested in science and technology. It’s not clear his genes will reveal much. Nobody else in his extended family reached 100, and he thinks only a couple reached 90, he said in a telephone interview.

So why does he think he lived so long? He credits 70 years of marriage to his wife, Marie. She in turn cites his “intense interest in so many things” over a lifetime, from building radios as a child to pursuing a career in electronics research.

But scientists believe there is more to it, and they want to use genome sequencing to investigate. Dr. Richard Cawthon of the University of Utah, who is seeking longevity genes by other means, says it may turn up genetic features that protect against multiple diseases or that slow the process of aging in general.

Protective features of a centenarian’s DNA can even overcome less-than-ideal lifestyles, says Dr. Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. His own study of how centenarians live found that “as a group, they haven’t done the right things.”

Many in the group he studied were obese or overweight. Many were smokers, and few exercised or followed a vegetarian diet. His oldest participant, who died this month just short of her 110th birthday, smoked for 95 years.

“She had genes that protected her against the environment,” Barzilai said. One of her sisters died at 102, and one of her brothers is 105 and still manages a hedge fund.

Earlier this month, Scripps Health of San Diego announced a different genome project involving the elderly. The Scripps Wellderly Study will receive the complete genomes of 1,000 people age 80 and older from a sequencing company.

A complete genome reveals not only genes but also other DNA that’s responsible for regulating genes. It’s “the full monty,” showing DNA elements that are key for illness and health, says Dr. Eric Topol, who heads the Wellderly Study.

Participants in that study have an average age of 87 and range up to 108, and they’ve never had diabetes, heart disease or cancer, or any neurological disease.

“Why are these people Teflon-coated?” Topol asked. “Why don’t they get disease?” The ability to turn out lots of complete genomes is “the new-new thing” in trying to find out, he said.

“There’s been too much emphasis on disorders per se and not enough on the people who are exceptionally healthy,” to learn from their genomes, Topol said. “Now we have the powerful tools to do that.”

Published: Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 11:14 p.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 11:14 p.m.

Southwest Florida homeowners, in particular — are straining to make their mortgage payments.

A dangerously high percentage of mortgage-holders in Sarasota, Charlotte and Manatee counties are now spending more than 35 percent of their income on their mortgage, property insurance and taxes, and other major home expenses, new census data shows.

Economists say that phenomenon is a definitive warning sign of further foreclosures.

The rule of thumb is that communities are in danger when more than 35 percent of homeowners are spending more than 35 percent of their income on these monthly expenses.

In Sarasota County, 41 percent of homeowners fit that definition; in Charlotte, it was 46 percent; and in Manatee, 38 percent.

“It definitely portends a future trend of high percentages of foreclosures and short sales for the next few years,” said Jack McCabe, a Deerfield Beach real estate consultant.

Unemployment, declining incomes and the resetting of adjustable-rate mortgages are pushing those income-to-mortgage ratios higher even though a record number of owners already have lost their homes to foreclosure in recent years.

A look at the highest rates for Florida’s largest counties reflects the epicenters of high-rolling investment during the boom and foreclosures during the downturn: Monroe, Dade, Collier, Broward, Osceola, Palm Beach and Sarasota counties top the list.

McCabe, who correctly predicted the housing downturn, was especially alarmed by data showing that half of Miami homeowners are now spending more than 35 percent of their incomes on housing.

Economists worried about the strain of housing costs on household budgets even before the downturn.

“We talked a lot during the housing boom about affordability as prices rose faster than income,” said Sean Snaith, a University of Central Florida economist.

Because of its demographics, the trend is particularly troubling in Southwest Florida, said Sarasota attorney Anne Weintraub.

“A good portion of our community is retirees trying to use their fixed incomes to pay for everyday expenses, including their mortgage payment,” said Weintraub, who wrote a manual to familiarize non-real estate attorneys and their borrower-clients with the foreclosure process and who has handled hundreds of short sales for struggling homeowners.

“These percentages are off the charts, and invite mortgage defaults,” Weintraub said.

Port Charlotte’s John Cannon says he paid way too much — about $210,000 — for a home during the boom that he would be lucky to sell today for $125,000.

“It’s a gorgeous house,” said Cannon, who is no relation to the Lakewood Ranch builder of the same name. “I gave them way too much money, I don’t know what I was thinking. But I make the payments. It hurts every month I write that check.”

But not writing it is simply not an option for Cannon, 37, who says walking away from an agreement is unthinkable. It is not the kind of message he would like to send to his 16-year-old son.

Business virtually halted in 2008 for Cannon’s firm, Treemendous Tree Service, which is in North Port.

To make the payments on his home and his business’ trucks Cannon worked two years in Port Arthur, Texas, where there was work for an arborist at the oil refineries, which were all in expansion mode at the time.

Now he is back in Southwest Florida and the landscaping business has picked up enough to get by.

“You gotta do what you gotta do, you just can’t sit around and complain,” Cannon said.

While three years of economic hardship seem to have only hardened Cannon’s commitment to meet his obligations, others are giving up the fight to stay in homes whose values have sunk far below their mortgage debt.

“The numbers clearly show that strategic default is an epidemic,” said Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

The census data shows that Southwest Florida homeowners have long carried heavier mortgage burdens than other Americans, or other Floridians.

According to the 2000 census, 24.9 percent of Sarasota County households were spending more than 35 percent of their income on their mortgage and other monthly payments. At that time, Florida’s average was 22.8 percent and the national average was 19.1 percent.

But the run-up on home prices in the first half of the decade brought about a severe shift in how much income homeowners were diverting to their monthly housing costs.

In 2000, the only major Florida county violating economists’ 35 percent rule was Monroe, home to Key West and traditionally some of the state’s highest-priced homes.

By 2006, 11 of Florida’s 30 biggest counties, based on property values, had crested the benchmark.

By 2011, 21 counties did.

“When incomes go up, they go up in drips and drabs,” McBride said. “But particularly for homeowners that took out exotic mortgages, when the mortgages went up, it went up at a pace that income couldn’t approach.”

Before the boom, the rule of thumb was that banks would make mortgage loans only to borrowers who would pay no more than 28 percent of their income on their monthly payments, McCabe said.

“During the boom years that changed once Wall Street started buying mortgages from originators who would do business with pretty much anyone who could fog a mirror when they came in to get a loan,” said McCabe, the Deerfield Beach real estate consultant.

Also worrisome is that the five- and seven-year teaser rate loans will still be resetting at much higher rates through 2013, which could push even more counties into violating the 35/35 rule.

“That’s why we’re probably going to see these rates continue to go up next year,” McCabe said.

Published: Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 1:00 a.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 7:38 p.m.

An editorial Sunday focused on the 85 percent increase in suicides in Sarasota County from 2000 to 2010. The editorial also noted that suicide rates in both Sarasota and Manatee counties have exceeded the statewide rate.

Since 1993, Sarasota County’s suicide rate has been higher than the statewide rate, according to a calculation used by the Florida Department of Health. In 15 of the past 20 years for which data are available, the suicide rates in both Manatee and Sarasota counties have exceeded Florida’s rate.

As we stated, these trends are unacceptable and should be reversed — in our community and throughout Florida.

Our community can mobilize to help reverse these trends and prevent the numbers from increasing even more. Preventing suicide is difficult and complex. But communities can take several basic steps to improve the chances of prevention.

Local experts recommend the following:

* Promoting awareness.

It’s vital for communities to understand the scope of the problems and mobilize to highlight solutions.

On Aug. 1, the local Behavioral Health Strategic Planning Work Group will meet and continue exploring suicide data from Sarasota County to determine whether they will make the issue of suicide a priority.

Looking at the numbers is a good first step toward addressing the upward trend of local suicides.

* Recognizing symptoms.

Mary Ruiz, president and CEO of Manatee Glens — a behavioral health hospital that handles many state-ordered mental health evaluations — told us that people who commit suicide often experience months of depression. With early detection and affordable access to effective care, that depression can be treated.

An accurate diagnosis is also critical. Sometimes, Ruiz said, physical symptoms of depression are overlooked. In the time leading up to a suicide, an individual might go to the doctor with a backache and not realize it is a symptom of depression, Ruiz said. Also, she said depression is common after a serious car accident or heart attack because the mind is affected as well as the body.

Instead of ignoring the suicidal thoughts of others, it can help to listen to them, Ruiz said. Seeking help is crucial. Depression, she said, is the most treatable mental illness, through both drugs and counseling, but action must be taken.

And, when treatment is sought, it must be accessible and effective.

* Erasing stereotypes.

The stigma surrounding mental illness is one of the reasons people might brush off feelings of depression instead of seeking help. Ruiz said it would help if the stigma was removed.

She calls depression a “no-fault brain disease” and said “if it’s OK to have cancer, it’s OK to have depression.” Society, she said, contributes to people dealing with depression on their own. Without professional help, she said, consequences can be tragic.

* Detecting risks.

Along with knowing some of the basics about depression and suicide, Sarasota County suicide rates might decrease if there were funding for more preventive measures that would help identify people at risk of mental illness.

Ruiz suggests screening young adults for mental illness in school, then showing the results of the screenings to parents who could then pursue possible treatments. This idea deserves the attention of both local mental health agencies and Manatee and Sarasota county school districts.

“We screen for scoliosis, but not for mental illness. We need universal screening; otherwise we are taking our chances at every school and every community,” Ruiz said.

* Funding treatment.

Florida relies on community-based nonprofit providers — such as Manatee Glens and Coastal Behavioral Healthcare in Sarasota — for affordable access to mental-health and substance-abuse treatment.

Funding for those services was in peril during this year’s session of the Legislature. Fortunately, the funding was maintained, but, as Jerry Thompson, president and CEO of Coastal, points out, such funding hasn’t increased over the past 10 years.

Is there a connection between stagnated funding and rising suicides?

There might not be proof at this point, but there is enough evidence of a link to warrant an urgent, comprehensive review of state and local policies — on funding, screening, prevention and treatment — before more lives are lost.

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“The best science in the world has not managed to persuade governments to reverse forest degradation in order to protect the critical ecosystem services provided by trees. “

“Asian and Latin American countries have cleared more than 40 percent of their forests, due in part to the fact that at least 20 percent of American timber imports are illegally harvested from these regions.”

PUBLISHED IN “THE SARASOTA HERALD TRIBUNE”, SARASOTA, FLORIDA.

By MEG LOWMAN

Meg Lowman, longtime Florida scientist/educator, is establishing the Nature Research Center at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, with a mission to engage the public. Her column appears monthly on these pages.

Published: Monday, June 13, 2011 at 1:00 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, June 10, 2011 at 6:44 p.m.

“…almost all natural ecosystems are currently degrading at alarming rates, due to human activities. Forests alone provide us with fresh water, medicines, foods, building materials, soil conservation, a genetic library of millions of species, energy production and carbon storage.

Despite the efforts of thousands of professionals over the past several decades, deforestation continues to increase.”

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.Cuba Develops Four Cancer Vaccines, Ignored by the Media

By By Tony Seed

Global Research, July 07, 2014

Tony Seed's Weblog 5 July 2014

The fact that Cuba has already developed four cancer vaccines undoubtedly is big news for humanity if you bear in mind that according to the World Health Organization nearly 8 million people die from that disease every year. However, the monopoly media have completely ignored this reality.

In 2012, Cuba patented the first therapeutic vaccine in the world against advanced lung cancer, called CIMAVAX-EGF. In January 2013, the island announced the second cancer vaccine, known as Racotumomab.

Clinical tests, carried out in 86 nations, revealed that though these vaccines do not cure the disease, they do reduce the tumors thus improving the quality and expectancy of life of the patients.

Vaccines developed by Cuba’s Molecular Immunology Centre

The Havana-based Molecular Immunology Center is the creator of these vaccines. The center had already developed the Meningitis-B Vaccine in 1985, one of its kind in the world. Later there came other vaccines, such as the Hepatitis-B and the Dengue. Experts at the entity have been researching for years on a HIV-Aids vaccine as well.

The Cuban agenda against cancer is also joined by Labiofam pharmaceutical enterprise, which develops homeopathic medications against the disease, such as VIDATOX, made from the venom of blue scorpion, native of Cuba.

At present, Cuba exports these products to 26 countries and participates in joint ventures in China, Canada and Spain. This breaks the extended media silence about the advancements of Cuba and other South countries in the field, and the largely voiced stereotype that advanced pharmaceutics is only developed in the developed countries.

Cuba’s research philosophy opposes the market policies of the big pharmaceutical industry

And although Cuba obtains economic revenues from the sales of its products, its research philosophy diametrically opposes the market policies of the big pharmaceutical industry.
Nobel Medicine Laureate Richard J. Roberts recently denounced that big pharmaceutical companies aim their research not to curing diseases, but to developing products for chronic conditions, which are more economically profitable. Roberts said that the diseases usually found in the poorest nations are not object of research, due to their low profitability, and for this reason 90 per cent of the research budget is dedicated to finding out about the diseases that affect only 10 per cent of the world population.

Cuban research aims at developing vaccines to prevent diseases

The Cuban medical and pharmaceutical industry largely aims its research at developing vaccines to prevent diseases and, as a result, lower the people’s medication expenses.

Cuba attains higher health indicators than the United States using up to twenty times less resources, according to an article in Science Magazine by Paul Drain and Michele Barry, two scientists at the Standford University in California. It happens that there are no commercial or market pressures or profits on the Cuban model, while there is a successful educative strategy for the population as to prevention.

Along with these vaccines, natural and traditional medicine and other alternative medicinal practices have been introduced for years in the island’s health sector.

Generics put at the service of the poor countries and the WHO

In Cuba, medicines are distributed to the people firstly, through the hospital network free of charge and through a system of drugstores that sell them at highly subsidized prices.

The Cuban pharmaceutical industry hardly uses money for publicity, which in the case of multi-national corporations this activity surpasses the budgets dedicated to doing research.

The Caribbean nation is also boosting the production of generics that it puts at the service of other poor countries and the World Health Organization, at a price which is much lower than those imposed by the big world industry.

The US economic blockade hurts the US diabetic population

Last but not least, it is important to note that the US economic blockade of Cuba hinders the marketing of Cuban pharmaceuticals in the United States, thus affecting the US people. For instance, a total of 80 thousand diabetic people who undergo toe amputation every year in the United States every year cannot access the Cuban vaccine known as Heberprot-P, which precisely avoids such amputations.

Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Peter Agre recently said that Cuba is a magnificent example of how knowledge and scientific research can be integrated. The general director of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said that she was impressed at the scientific achievements of Cuba and expressed her organization’s willingness to promote them around the world.

So then, the question to be asked here is: Will UNESCO be able to count on the crucial collaboration by the mainstream media to promote the Cuban achievements?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/cuba-develops-four-cancer-vaccines-ignored-by-the-media/5390303